A Selection of the Most Genuinely Terrifying People in Metal

A couple of weeks back, apropos of the kinda disconcerting intensity of the excellent new album by Death Grips, we published a feature about the most terrifying people in hip hop. The idea proved mildly controversial, but we’re happy to say most readers saw the feature for what it was: a lighthearted idea with utility across a bunch of genres. As such, we thought we’d follow up this week with the other genre that’s been the bête noire of respectable parental types over the years: metal. As with hip hop, this is a genre that’s produced its fair share of genuinely disconcerting characters — we’ve nominated a few after the jump, and as ever, we’re open to suggestions.

Shawn Crahan

Slipknot are old hat these days, but there was something genuinely disconcerting about them when they first emerged from Iowa in the early 2000s — and none more so than founder and percussionist Shawn Crahan, a man given to bringing the carcass of a bird in a jar with him on stage, and sniffing it before starting a set (a trick he may have borrowed from Dead of Mayhem, of whom more shortly). Apart from Crahan’s corpse-sniffing ways and general air of barely suppressed rage, there’s also the fact that clowns are just inherently scary.